A cold stench of sweat, tobacco, saltpetre, whiffs ofbleach and ammonia. Elsa crossed the entrance hall ofthe Moulin Rouge without greeting the cleaningladies. At ten o’clock in the morning, the music hallthat had set the legendary heart of Montmartre beating,where Lautrec and Picasso kicked up their heelsand caught the clap, was no postcard. The girl in thered raincoat burst into the office of the imbecilic personnelmanager, whose mouth was constantly agapefrom stupidity and chronic sinusitis.“Rose is leaving. I want to take her place with the twolead dancers.”“Um, uh . . .”“I want to become a dresser. Rose’ll teach me. Thatway, you won’t have to train up anyone. The directoragrees. And so does the stage manager. I’ve askedthem.”“So we’ll be losing another pain in the arse from thesewing room. Great!”“I’ll be good. I promise!”She yelled out a thank you then ran up the spiralstaircase towards the door of the men’s dressing roomsto tell Manfred that she’d soon be taking care of himevery evening. By clothing her darling, she’d manageto seduce him with her hands and eyes.Behind the door, Manu Chao was belting out je net’aime plus mon amour, je ne t’aime plus tous les jours. Sheknocked. Manfred didn’t answer. She opened the doorand found herself face to face with a rail full of costumesthat was barring her way. She pushed it slightlyaside, making its wheels grate menacingly. Then Elsasaw her love swimming in his blood. She didn’t havetime to scream.

Hot blood is flowing down her throat, slithering over her lips,spilling its body heat onto the clay floor. A sweet smell fills herskull, her eyes close to embrace death. In the darkness of hereyelids, screams from men ring out as they are shot down likedogs, the raucous rattle of the Kalashnikovs, the whistle ofbullets and the dull, almost soft sound of metal penetratingthe flesh of men, women and the tender muscles of children.Blood of her blood stains her skin. Close your eyes. Stay still.Death protects us from everything.

Maurice Laice shrank back, as though he’d disturbed acouple making love. But it was just death. Love anddeath again. The corpses piled one on the other, minglingtheir blood, looked as if they’d been punishedfor a forbidden union. The resulting still life couldhave been entitled Storm of Blood in a Bijou Residence.Those gaping arteries had sprayed the mirrors, powder,make-up and spangles. Slaughters like this onereally didn’t go with such brightly coloured curtains,or the pale carpet, which had presumably once beenpink, though Maurice couldn’t swear to it. Fortunately,the patches of gore seemed to be the same colour asfallen maple leaves. Being colour-blind wasn’t all bad!He unwrapped a stick of cinnamon-flavoured chewinggum and folded it into his mouth. Having to face suchcarnage on the way back from his father’s funeral was abit more than he could take. It was almost enough tomake him feel queasy.Unsticking those two bodies that were gluedtogether with coagulated blood was not going to befun. Why did Maurice imagine such things? Maybebecause of his mother, who he’d just left out there in avillage near Mâcon, alone with a dead man who wouldcontinue to linger in her household routines for years.How to cast off your other half after forty-two years ofmarriage? On being separated, that flesh which hadbeen grafted together must peel away, just as it wouldfor these two butchered specimens who were about tobe split. At that moment, Maurice’s own blood drainedfrom his skull. He leaned against the doorjamb, tracinga line of haemoglobin down his coat as he did so.His heart was beating like mad. He tried to calm himselfdown by remembering how he, at least, was gluedto no one. He had all his own flesh, just to himself, andone day his coffin would swallow up a sack of old, buttotally intact skin.The youth and beauty of the two victims were terribleto behold. Their dark eyes gleamed like polishedpebbles in the snow. Maurice kneeled down, just stoppinghimself from touching the girl’s icy cheek. Legsstraight out of a commercial, in hold-up stockings,emerged from her scarlet raincoat. Her transparentface, topped by black hair, could have belonged to oneof those baby-faced virgins on the ceiling of the SistineChapel. A Michelangelo angel. Momo’s heart wassprouting wings. Already, back at Granville, he hadbeen smitten by a lovely holidaymaker, murdered inher seaweed bath. It made him wonder if he wasbecoming a necrophile. His eyes turned to the naked,solidly muscular body of the man, his brown hair curlingaround his face, with its thick sensuous mouth. Itwas easy to see why jerks from Tokyo or Cincinnaticame in droves to admire his grace among the dancinggirls. Momo stood up, waiting for his head to stopspinning.“My deepest sympathy, Inspector,” said a cop whohad shown up in a sweat, a large camera bouncing onhis belly.Maurice sketched a mournful smile around his cigarillo.This idiot was talking about his father in front ofthis horror show. He could shove his sympathy up hisarse. Why couldn’t all these shit-heads go and dumptheir fine words elsewhere?“I didn’t know them personally,” Maurice said,straight-faced. “As for my father, thanks.”No one could sympathize with his grief. And was iteven grief ? More like a chill. His father’s death openedthe door on the black hole waiting for him, and a blastof cold air was now freezing his bones. He had beenwarned. He was now to be head of the queue at thedoor separating him from the next world. As for thisbutchered couple here, they must have been taken bysurprise. There were presumably loads of people holdingopen the door for them and saying: “Don’t worry,so long as I’m here, you’ve nothing to fear. I’ll gobefore you do.”The personnel manager arrived, mouth agape.Maurice wasn’t quite sure why he found this characterso irritating.“And no one heard anything?”“There was music playing full blast, and no one elsein the dressing rooms. Only Manfred was due torehearse, because of a change of partners.”Momo looked at him. That’s what was bugging him:the way he breathed with his mouth open, completelyoblivious to how useful a nose can be.In the gory bijou dressing room the fat sweaty copwas flashing his camera at the loving couple. Mauricethought fleetingly how much the girl looked like theonly woman he’d ever dared keep by his side for anylength of time. But that now seemed so long ago. Backthen, he’d still believed in happiness. Ever since, he’dstopped himself from thinking about her. Memories ofher plunged him into an ocean of blues, and he didn’thave sea legs.He bent down over a dog-eared photo stuck on themirror above the dressing table. Blood had pockmarkedits background, but the portrait was stillperfectly visible. But Maurice was unsure if it was aman, woman, a girlfriend or a mother. The personlooked ageless and sexless. He picked it up with hishandkerchief.The boys from forensics appeared. Maurice went outto make room for them. There wasn’t enough space inMontmartre to play cowboys and indians.“Try and be precise for once. Because we’re going tohave to stage the scene that led up to this final tableau.To work out who was the intended victim. Him, her, orboth of them.”“She wanted to become a dresser,” the personnelmanager announced. “And I didn’t say no. She’d beenworking for the last eighteen months in the sewingroom. She made costumes, she dreamed of becominga fashion designer . . .”Momo saw the boys get out their magnifying glassesand brushes, producing the strange effect of cleaningoff make-up in this music hall dressing room, a curiousversion of the order of things. In other words, theusual shit-heap. He went with Gaping Mouth to hisoffice. Manfred Godalier had been taken on as a leaddancer six months back. He was twenty-nine, born inthe Somme department. As for Elsa Suppini, she wastwenty-one, and from Bastia, Corsica.A Corsican from Bastia, for Momo, was like lemonjuice on a live oyster. He had no desire to get himselfcaught up in a worse than Cretan labyrinth, withcretins in hoods out to have your balls for breakfast.But this was no time to think testicles. Momo preferredto ignore their existence. Anything to do with sexturned him off. One day, that little ball-breaker Agneshad come out with the following complaint: “Thecloser you get to being a stiff, the less stiff you get.” Thefucking cow! Not everyone’s born misogynous, butsome women seem to work hard at keeping it up as atradition. Agnes was so far off her trolley that Mauricehad been though his own personal Waterloo and stillhadn’t got over it. The main occupant of his Y-frontshad stayed as limp as cotton. Total calm. Any quieter,and you’d be dead. He still resented the fact that thislover of shiatsu and Zen hadn’t been moreencouraging. Whatever people say, a man needs ahelping hand sometimes, not a constant put-down.He’d dared to utter a meek “You’re so hard!”, whichhad been volleyed straight back with a “And you’renot!” One laugh too many and a backhanded insultmeant that a forty-something, rather fragile individualhad lost it, and any hope of getting it back. Just beforehis father’s death, when his mother had called –“Come quick, your father’s very ill” – Maurice hadtorn up his invitation to Agnes’s wedding. But thishadn’t been bad news. More like a relief really,because the crazy bitch had regularly come and struttedaround him, like a she-cat in heat in front of a tom.In the end, when cats screw, it’s because the femalesare burning up, and the males relieve themselves. Butneither of them is really involved. They prefer scratchingand pissing on walls so as to say “My patch, keepoff”. Over the years, Maurice Laice hadn’t even managedto make his walls stink bad enough to stop thespread of murders in his manor. He always got theretoo late, to catch the reflection of a killer in the eyes ofa corpse.When he went back into the dressing room, he tooka long hard look at the face of the twenty-one-year-oldCorsican girl. Elsa Suppini. In her eyes Momo thoughthe could read fear, incomprehension, the sorrow ofsomeone who had too much will to die so soon. Butthere was no hatred. Maurice felt a frisson rise up hisback. He knew that when he was confronted with themurderer, he would be gripped by infinite sadness anddespair.